One of my colleagues, Demi Dowdy, and I were talking about whether Donald Trump would lead a third-party movement, which the Republican presidential hopeful has said he wouldn’t do. I said I doubted Trump, who loves "winning," would try such a bid, which would be doomed to fail. That would make Trump a loser, and […]

By Jay Schalin The recruitment of athletes with extremely weaker academic skills than the rest of the student population means that the system is knowingly corrupt from the start. Otherwise many athletes in the revenue-producing sports (and a few others such as track and baseball) could not possibly maintain eligibility without skirting the rules. Such […]

I'm a cynical old conservative who's seen a lot, and even I am taken aback when I see the news media lying about something I've seen with my own eyes. A Reuters report is headlined on CBS: "Black Lives Matter protestors cut off Donald Trump in North Carolina." A single vulgar word is the most […]

I went to Donald Trump's rally tonight in Raleigh. My impressions begin: The crowd filing into Dorton Arena on the state fairgrounds was younger than I had expected. Of course many people were middle-aged, but I was surprised to see how many teens and people in their twenties there seemed to be. There were also […]

Here's a real question for the Christmas season: to put up a real tree or an artificial one? You can register your own opinion at our online poll at nccivitas.org. Nationally, tradition holds: Real tree sales hold a two-to-one margin over artificial tree sales most years, with both segments doing more $1 billion each year. […]